Supply Chain Technology Blog

There’s a good chance the last time you ordered takeout or went out for a quick bite, Parts Town played a crucial role in keeping you fed and happy. Parts Town is the market-leading distributor of genuine OEM (original equipment manufacturer) foodservice equipment parts. When there’s a hiccup in any commercial kitchen, Parts Town is ready to jump in and help with the most in-stock parts on the planet, innovative technology, and an exceptional customer experience. They provide customized solutions to benefit food equipment service companies, chain restaurants, institutions and independent restaurants.

Parts Town prides itself on its culture of deeply-rooted core values, creating rapid growth over the last 15 years. With all of its breakthrough innovations, including same day shipping, they are certainly a leader in forward thinking. These innovations can be found in all facets of the Parts Town business, so it's no surprise that the company has addressed many operational challenges within the walls of the Parts Town distribution center, especially where customer satisfaction is concerned.

A Single Ripple

No company likes cancelled orders, but it happens. On top of the loss in business, an order cancellation ripples throughout the supply chain. “When the customer says ‘I would like to cancel this,’ said Kenny William, Director of Process Improvement for Parts Town, “we were handling these one-off issues by taking the in-process work that had been orphaned by an order cancellation and just keeping it on the side and putting it away when we could do so.”

Since Parts Town is always busy, "when we could do so" was sometimes not the same day. The items from those orders were physically in the building, but not restocked in the system, complicating order fulfillment for other customers. William thought there had to be a way to streamline the restocking process, eliminating delays. Identifying an opportunity to improve their supply chain management, William and his team went into action, working to build a custom workflow for cancelled orders.

WMS to the Rescue

To fix the issue, Parts Town leveraged existing processes in HighJump™ warehouse management system (WMS) to save time on building out this new workflow and keep things simple for operators. Within a couple of weeks, the company had tighter processes, greater inventory visibility, and more accurate stock counts.

“We now have a standardized process for return to stock,” said William. “That’s made it a lot faster, a lot easier, a lot more accurate. It’s just one of the examples how HighJump surprises us around every turn with things we thought we were stuck doing the hard way, we can make easier.”

It’s not about flawless operations. The real secret to growth is finding opportunities to work smarter and more efficiently rather than falling back to bad habits. As you can see, it’s rarely only an internal problem; gaps in warehouse management processes and your WMS affect the business and customers at some point. But, with the right tools and a willingness to improve, challenges quickly become opportunities that push your organization forward.

“I can talk all day about how HighJump transforms our business,” said William. “One of the things I love about HighJump is that we can have an ongoing conversation about what HighJump should be able to do. When the operation decides something that was great needs a change…we find way in HighJump to make that happen and sometimes in a very short period of time.”

Now that you’ve seen the impact of process improvement, how do you think your business could benefit from tighter processes? Take a look at our webinar, “Embracing Continuous Process Improvement,” with Kenny William, Director of Process Improvement, Parts Town and Jon Kuerschner, VP of Project Management and Consulting, HighJump. You’ll come away with:

Ideas for how process improvements generate ROI for your business.

Best practices for managing complex supply chain systems

How to build a tighter relationship between IT and warehouse operations, and more